 | CANADA |
| CANADA |
THE PHARE DES MONTS
having dealt with the village of the Pointe des Monts, I still have something to do down here
There's a sign right down at the far end of the road that tells me that I'm at the Pointe des Monts - "Hilly Point", and here is the lighthouse for which I've been looking. This is the Phare du Pointe des Monts - the "Hilly Point Lighthouse".
I did actually think for a moment that the sign read Pointe des Morts - "Point of the Dead" - and I would really have been in my elephant then with a sign like that, especially as the ramparts are cluttered with all kinds of artillery.
Anyway, we've found a lighthouse. Not a black bear, but never mind. As Robert Mitchum said in El Dorado
Scattered around at the lighthouse are all kinds of rusting relics from a previous industrial age and so I wonder if these are maybe all kinds of relics from shipwrecks in the vicinity and which have been subsequently recovered.
Take this big anchor, for example. It's huge, very heavy, very well-built and very, very corroded. That's been quite knocked about by some kind of force and has been in the water for a good few years by my reckoning
It is actually from a Norwegian fishing vessel of 1032 tonnes, called the Cimba. She ran aground a short distance to the west of here and was lost. She was rediscovered and explored by a diving team in September 1983 and the anchor was salvaged.
As for the artillery, I didn't need an identity plaque (good job, as there wasn't one) to be able to tell you a little about the shorter, stubby cannon in the photo of the lighthouse above.
Its size tells us that it's quite old, it's definitely British, and Government Issue too. You can tell simply by noticing the "broad arrow" that has been cast into the outside of the gun barrel. That was the symbol for the British Office of Ordnance, which was created in 1544.
The figure 8 would indicate that this cannon fired 8-pound solid shot.
As for the second cannon, no doubts at all that this is a British weapon. Not only does it have the royal crown cast on it, it has the letters GR cast into it, indicating that it was fabricated in the reign of King George.
But which King George? The British have had six of those, but I couldn't make out a number in the casting, so I don't know to which King George it might have related. However, the absence of a number might indicate that it was cast during the reign of the first King George, 1714 to 1727.
This would make the cannon to late to have been lost during Walker's expedition of 1711, and so I've no real idea what it is doing here.
These two engines are quite interesting too. The yellow one is not in fact an engine but an Ingersoll Rand Type 30 model 1582 air compressor.
The big green engine next to it is a 3-cylinder Lister from Dursley in Gloucestershire, England, where my friend Liz lived as a child. This engine is a type EA or a type FA - it's hard to tell as the maker's plate is so corroded. There's a casting number on it - 291-2838, and a number on the rocker cover is 474FR3R7, I think.
It's surprisingly complete too, even down to the radiator.
And having written all of that, I had a mail from someone called Michael Maxwell, who formerly worked at Lister's.
He told me
"The engine is a Lister FR diesel, Called the Freedom Range they were produced 1951 to 1963 in quite a few configuration across 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 cylinder versions.
Your engine number looks to be of the correct format (474FR3R7) it's the 474th FR3 (3 cylinder), R is for radiator, add 1950 to the last digit/s and you get 1957 for date of manufacture. The absence of a Z says its standard rotation."
Lister were quite famous in the period 1920-1960 for their big industrial engines. They were fitted in all kinds of plant such as road rollers, compressors, boats, ships, and I even acquired an old single-cylinder Lister diesel engine from an old scrap cement mixer.
And that reminds me. If you would like to add or to correct anything that I've written, don't be afraid to . I'm here to learn, just as much as you are.
Michael also suggested that, rather than being objects salvaged from a shipwreck, the engine could have been
"connected to a compressor it could be used to fill air tanks to use on the fog horn during fog rather than power
generation"
But back to the plot.
The decline of Lister and the rise of similar but more-modern machinery from the Far East summed up the attitude to innovation in the UK during the 1960s. "If it was good enough for my grandad, it'll be good enough for my grandson" and they failed to move with the times.
The whole of British senior management regarded themselves as holding their superiority by God-given right. They had no imagination and no sense of innovation either.
The UK passed from being one of the World's major industrial powers to an insignificant offshore island in less than a generation.
These two electric motors come from the long-closed-down Lancashire Dynamo and Crypto Ltd, which had offices in Manchester (the Warwick Road end of Trafford Park to be precise) and Willesden.
There's a supplier's plate on them too - from Berco Canada with offices in Montreal and Toronto.
According to the maker's plate, they are rated at 500vA continuous. That's not a great deal for a shipboard electric motor, and so we're back to the idea of it being equipment from the lighthouse.
Now would you believe this? It's early evening right now and after our drive up along the St Lawrence today and passing all of these ships anchored off Baie Comeau, this is, I think, the first one that I've actually seen on the move today.
Of course it would have to be just as it's starting to go dark and so despite perring through the cat's cradle of exposed cables, I can't make out her name.
I had some slightly better luck when I passed by here in early October 2016. While I was prowling around the site, I was distracted by another very good candidate for our ship of the day today, and this time there were no electric cables in the way.
I rushed off to grab the zoom lens to photograph it and so to see if I could identify it, but no such luck. It was way too far out in the estuary for me to see it properly and this one will have to remain anonymous too.
I came to the conclusion that the Phare des Monts is not one of the best ship-spotting venues that I have ever found.
Turning the clock back to that early evening in May 2012 and it's blowing a veritable freezing-cold gale around here just now. There are however a couple of buildings in a sort-of hollow just 200 metres from the lighthouse and it's quite sheltered just there if I can squeeze the Dodge into the gap.
Consequently, I reckon that I've found my overnight stop for today and I settle in quite nicely out of the wind. First job therefore is to make something to eat, because I'm starving.
But I reckon that there must have been some changes to this site since I was here back then. However when I came by here in 2016, I took a photo across the creek to the information bulding and you can see that there's just that one and no other building there. I'm certain that I didn't imagine it
But at least there's a good photo of Strider, my Ford Ranger.
I've told you in the past that I'm totally fed up of paying the ridiculous hire charges that these rental companies demand, and all of the severe arguments about whether "unlimited mileage" actually means "unlimited mileage".
And so last year I bought the Ford Ranger - a 2008 model 4x4 with off-road kit, larger wheels and off-road tyres - and two visits to Canada (2015 and 2016) have put me ahead of the financial game.
I should have done it years ago.
Back in 2012 again and while I'm waiting for my evening meal to be cooked, I can tell you a few things about the lighthouse here because I'm sure that you are dying to know all about it.
The Pointe des Monts is significant in that it is just here that the St Lawrence River ends and we find ourselves at the start of the Gulf of St Lawrence. The river dramatically widens from about 45kms to 100 kms, and from now on we are going to be very lucky if we see the southern shore.
It will simply disappear into the mists, as gorillas do.
It's the north shore that dramatically opens out and so coming upriver from the Atlantic, it's the north shore that dramatically closes in, and so the Pointe des Monts has always suffered more than its fair share of shipwrecks.
The lighthouse was erected here in 1829-30 at a cost of £960, and was the first lighthouse of any consequence on the North Shore. It has a height of about 29 metres and, naturally, it burnt seal-oil or whale-oil.
"Obtained locally by the lighthouse keeper himself" I mused.
The lighthouse was manned ... "PERSONNED" - ed ... for about 150 years but is now automated and is electrically-powered.
And so I settle down for the night, nice and peacefully, without anyone bothering me at all. This site was clearly the inspiration for Thomas Hardy when he wrote his famous novel "Phare from the Madding Crowd".
Here's the view from my bedroom window as I slowly drop off to sleep, and the moon slowly rises over the St Lawrence and the lighthouse.
And apparently, the night that I spent here was one of the nights where the moon was as close as ever it gets to the earth. It had the appearance of being immense and causing, as you would expect, the most incredible tidal pulls.
What with one thing and another, I was really lucky to rock gradually to sleep with a moon like this to watch over me.
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